


Snowfall

by ganbarimaster



Series: Jinzula [6]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Blood, For the Horde!, Gen, Northrend, Orgrimmar, Peril, Post-World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, Warcraft Lore, World of Warcraft: Legion, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23645539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ganbarimaster/pseuds/ganbarimaster
Summary: Beginning her journey through Northrend in earnest, Jinzula is faced with the frozen wastes of Dragonblight and all that they hold.
Series: Jinzula [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/892098





	Snowfall

Upon her departure from Unu’pe, Jinzula soon boarded a turtle boat (which turned out to be an actual turtle, as opposed to merely being shaped like a turtle as she had originally assumed) which had led to another tuskarr encampment at Dragonblight. It was a smooth journey, one which had afforded her the time to perform some additional maintenance on her equipment. She thought about the warmth that had just been shown to her whilst masquerading as a member of the Horde. There was a certain appeal to the simplicity of the tuskarr lifestyle, but there was no way she could abide the cold, nor the whale milk. But the sense of community they enjoyed was something that had long been missing from her life. It was theoretically possible that she could find a place among the ranks of the Horde—and find that sense of community there—but the idea of bending the knee to whatever warchief of the month, and being sent to fight someone else’s war grated. She would not give up her freedom again.

In the early days of her escape from Rosemont Manor, Jinzula had made the long journey from the Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor by herself, with a few stops along the way. She had not departed from the Baron’s Estate empty handed, instead making sure that she had pocketed enough coin to move around comfortably for a while. As far as Jinzula was concerned, that putrid stain Rosemont was lucky to come away from this affair still breathing, and so could stand to lose some of his ill-gotten fortune. Stopping briefly in the snowy hills of Dun Morogh, she found her kin struggling to eke out an existence whilst constantly being harried by dwarven aggression. Sabotaging the dwarven machinery was the best she could do then to support her people, but it was difficult to find a way to otherwise meaningfully connect with them. The members of the Frostmane Tribe looked and sounded so very different from her, and she knew so little of their ways. Jinzula believed that there was no way they would welcome her as one of their own as she was. She resolved to return someday, to see if there was a place here she could call home. Until such a time came, the best prospects for her survival seemed to be on Kalimdor, with the Horde. Or so she had thought.

Upon her reaching Durotar’s rugged terrain, tensions were high. The then Warchief of the Horde, a Darkspear Troll named Vol’jin, had been killed during an assault on a Legion stronghold on the Broken Isles. Not long before Jinzula had arrived, a memorial ceremony had been held in his name. Although she had made a concerted effort to appear inconspicuous, to attempt to blend in with the other trolls, security was abnormally high. The windings streets of Orgrimmar were an unfamiliar place. She had not thought to tailor her speech, and had an inchoate understanding of the troll language. Before long she had attracted the wrong kind of attention and had narrowly avoided imprisonment. They had taken her for a spy at best or, at worst, an agent of the Legion in disguise. If Jinzula ever wanted to blend in here, it would take a lot more work—but what she had seen made her question whether it would even be worth the effort. There were shackles here of a different sort beyond those of imprisonment, and Jinzula was done with shackles.

Much quicker than expected, Jinzula had arrived at the Moa’ki Harbour. It was somehow even more frigid here than it had been in Unu’pe, the chill winds biting at her extremities. Not wishing to tarry overlong, and hoping to make the most of the daylight, Jinzua stopped only briefly for supplies here before pushing on into Dragonblight proper. She was greeted at first with the mere skeletons of trees which constituted the Snowfall Glade, before breaking out into the vast and seemingly endless white plains. As the Wyrmrest Temple came into view, Jinzula recalled the stories she had read about the dragonflights. She would soon be traversing the vast Dragon Wastes on foot, where dragons came to die. Jinzula had never seen a dragon, never mind a dead one. It was unsettling to think that the numerous creatures encountered in the bestiaries of the Rosemont library were all probably real—that the enormous and powerful dragons were not merely allegorical, a simple morality play, or a parable. All told, she had lived a relatively sheltered life. In the service of Baron Rosemont, there had been little need for her to travel far afield, to visit other worlds, or to trade blows with creatures from the endless void. And she was thankful for that. It seemed as though there were more things in Azeroth and the Great Beyond than she could have ever hoped to conceive.

Even though she had already lost the feeling of her ears and nose, there was no denying how beautiful this place was. The untouched sheets of snow, which stretched out into the horizon, glittered like a sea of gems under the light of the sun, which itself was nestled among wisps of pure-white cloud in an otherwise pristine blue sky. Taking it all in gave her the sense of calm and composure that would be critical for surviving this journey. Jinzula noticed that there was little life of any kind to be seen here beyond the birds, scavengers she supposed, which could be seen circling in the distance. A shadow passed overhead, quickly. Another bird, perhaps. But when it passed again her heart sank. It was much too big.

Jinzula quickly scanned her immediate surroundings. There might have been an outcrop that could provide some cover, or a small cavern, but all she could see was pure white. Breaking out into a dash, Jinzula pressed on with urgency. She was all too aware that she wouldn’t be able to outrun whatever flew overhead. Glancing skyward, the sun shone into her eyes and made it impossible to focus on whatever might have been pursuing her. Her heart raced and she could taste copper in her mouth. Another threat upon her life in only so many days. Maybe coming here was a bad idea after all. What did she expect to find? But that voice which spoke to her... She could still feel it pulling her somewhere. 

Before long the shadow came overhead once more, larger still. Suddenly, she felt a sharp, hot pain in her shoulders and a piercing shriek filled her ears. The creature had long, ungainly arms which now hung in front of her face, its deep purple skin stretched thin over its bones. Cracks in the mottled skin gave way to a sickening luminous green ooze. This was no dragon. 

Her feet had already left the ground by the time she had drawn her daggers. One of the two implements slipped from her fingers as the creature suddenly jerked upward, tearing through her flesh and muscles. Agony shot through both of her arms and she struggled to mount any kind of offence against the creature. More of the sickly green oozed dribbled down from the maw of the creature, just missing her feet as it dropped onto the ice and show—blackening the earth wherever it fell. 

They must have been more than fifteen or twenty feet over land when an enormous cloud of snow burst up toward them from below, accompanied by an unusual cry that sounded like nothing she had ever heard before. The snow completely obscured her vision, coating both Jinzula and her demonic assailant. In that same moment the terrible creature keeping her aloft loosened its grip, and Jinzula began tumbling back down to the earth. As she fell, Jinzula could see that an enormous worm-like creature, larger than a house, had pierced the strange bat-gargoyle abomination with its long, icy mandibles. Green ooze sprayed in all directions as the giant worm pulled the other-worldly creature into the depths beneath the snow. With a heavy thud she too came crashing down.


End file.
